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Forum:Too much information?
Look, I can understand wanting to reveal ALL the stuff that has happened in published adventures in each character's entry. I just don't agree with it. It isn't NECESSARY to say, "Originally Stone was never rescued and languished in Rock Island Prison for years and the Reckoners were eventually defeated. But with their last ounce of power, the Reckoners managed to send Stone back in time to 1876 as a retroactive assassin to destroy anyone who managed to defeat their plans. This older version, going by the alias "Old Pete," contacted the posse hired by Hellstromme and persuaded them to rescue his younger self from Rock Island Prison, giving them a patch from the 13th Alabama Infantry to show to him. Meanwhile, Old Pete tracked down Doc Snead and killed him as slowly and painfully as possible as retribution for originally turning him in. The posse managed to successfully rescue the younger Stone from Rock Island Prison and arrived at the cathedral in Lost Angels only to find that Grimme had used the Heart of Darkness to enact a ritual in what was known as Bloody Sunday. During the chaos, Old Pete stole the Heart of Darkness. When the posse and the younger Stone rendezvoused with him, Old Pete revealed to Stone that he was an older version of himself. The two summoned several Walkin' Dead as a distraction for their escape." Gah! I mean, do we have to include EVERY SPECK OF INFORMATION in a published adventure? What about something more like, "Originally Stone was imprisoned while the Reckoners were defeated, but he was rescued by a version of himself sent from the future sent back by the last shreds of their power, who duped the players into doing the job, and obtained the Heart of Darkness for his own goal of creating a Deadlands around one of the final bastions of resistance to the Reckoners in the far future." That's all that really needs to be said. Brevity is the soul of wit. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Iamfanboy (talk • ) 07:25, 11 November 2011 (UTC) :I appreciate you wanting to discuss this rather than creating an edit war. However, I have to respectfully diagree with your viewpoint because I believe that the shortened version creates more questions than it answers. How did he get the Heart of Darkness back? What was the future version like? How the heck did he wind up traveling back in time? It also leaves out important details, like that Stone was present at Bloody Sunday. :By having an entry with all the details by compiling all available information, it answers all of these questions and more. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but completeness is the soul of an encyclopedia. -Thunderforge 15:47, November 11, 2011 (UTC) :Well, quite frankly, I'm taking as my example things like the Kai Allard-Liao and Drizzt Do'Urden pages on various wikis - for example, the Kai wiki doesn't say, "He charged his Centurion into the combat to save Prince Victor, killing one enemy Clan 'Mech with a headshot from his Gauss Rifle and carrying the other off the cliff edge by charging it. Without any time to stay and search, Prince Victor retreated and left him for dead, but had he searched he would have found Kai on the shallow strip of land bordering the cliff's edge," it says, "In 3052, Kai found himself trapped behind enemy lines on Alyina after he sacrificed himself to ensure Victor was alive and able to retreat." :Adding things like, "He walked through the walls after summoning some walkin' dead to keep the players busy" seems less like trying to explain Stone's HISTORY and more like trying to explain the ADVENTURE itself. ::As a side note, remember to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~) which automatically signs your contribution as being from you. It makes the conversations easier to follow. ::I can see how ghosting through the wall and summoning walking dead might be considered to be trivial minutiae and could be replaced by just saying he managed to escape, but even so, I don't think it's nearly as detailed as your description of a battle. If it helps, my role model has been Wookieepedia. Luke Skywalker's page, for instance, reads: "With Solo and Chewbacca's help, the trio made it into the detention area in the guise of Imperial stormtroopers escorting a Wookiee prisoner. They were able to rescue Organa but had to jump into the garbage chute in order to escape the pursuing Imperial forces. Later, Skywalker and Organa were separated from Solo and Chewbacca, but after swinging across a deep shaft, they were to meet back up with their companions in the hangar bay." If instead it simply said, "he rescued Leia and escaped from the Death Star," it would really leave the article wanting. ::The above level of detail is consistently used on Wookieepedia and is at about the same level of detail as Stone's article is currently. Therefore I don't believe that it needs to change. You'll notice that I use very vague descriptions for parts of the adventure that don't directly involve Stone in order to focus more about him, but this adventure is his history and it makes sense to use it. Also whereas the article you cited about Kai Allard-Liao has twenty works that involved the man, we just have this one trilogy to reveal the bulk of Stone's history. So why reduce the scant information that we already have? -Thunderforge 06:21, November 13, 2011 (UTC) :::Reduce the information, because as presented, Stone's page is a dull read that adds unneeded information, spoils an adventure, and confuses the reader. If you're an insider then it's pretty good, but for an outsider or someone who hasn't read the material in 7+ years it is pure confusion. :::All you need to know is Stone precipitated events. If you need to know how he did that, check the source materials. :::ValhallaGH 18:01, November 14, 2011 (UTC) ::::It's good to have another person in on the discussion. First off, I'm a bit surprised that you say that Stone's page "spoils the adventure" since this whole wiki is a spoiler. I have yet to find any wiki out there that officially tries to prevent spoilers in their articles and I see no reason why this one should do differently. Besides, we put a big ol' warning on the main page about that. ::::Could you please clarify what you mean by it being pretty good for an insider, but confusing for someone who isn't? Is it the fact that the details are present or merely the way that they are presented? Also, I think we're all getting a little to focused on the Stone article. I wrote an article with Wyatt Earp with what I would consider to be a similar level of detail to Stone's, using information from the only Dime Novel/adventure he has appeared in. Does this article have the same issues as the Stone article or was it able to present the details in a better way? -Thunderforge 02:07, November 15, 2011 (UTC) ::::Yes, the Earp article is confusing - why does it talk about this one single Dodge City case that Earp didn't even do anything with. "He was a background NPC in this one story. We should give it as many words as his entire previous life." That is simply confusing. Especially since, in September 1879, Wyatt headed for Tombstone and zero page space goes to that. ::::Similarly, the Stone article spends more "ink" on Devil's Tower than on the rest of the article. But Devil's Tower isn't the most important thing Stone's done - just one of the better described events in the existing Deadlands material. ::::ValhallaGH 12:22, November 15, 2011 (UTC) ::::Historically, Earp did move to Tombstone, but I don't recall any Deadlands sources saying that he did (although the DLR Marshal's Handbook said he was planning to). Perhaps this is part of the source of our disagreement. I'd rather have information directly from the Deadlands material, rather than replicating the historical information from Wikipedia, which may or may not be accurate in the Deadlands universe (one small difference, for instance, is that the DLR Marshal's Handbook says that he moved to Dodge to join his friend Bat Masterson, but historically he didn't meet Masterson until he was in Dodge). As for Stone's Devil's Tower section, you're right that it is not the most important thing in his life, but because it is one of the better described events, it's about the only thing we can talk about. Similarly with Wyatt Earp, Independence Day is the only Deadlands event we know about. I think we should describe all available information in the best detail we can, rather than reducing the most detailed information because the rest of a character's life has not been described. -Thunderforge 17:52, November 15, 2011 (UTC) ::::First, nothing has been released about Dodge or Tombstone since June 1879, well before Earp actually moved. But they've hinted that it is coming - which isn't a big surprise, since the O.K. Corral is what made him famous for future history. ::::Second, based upon Cutter's comments, describing things in "the best detail we can" is a fast way to get this wiki killed by the owners of the intellectual property (IP). Summarize enough so a Marshal has a vague idea of what happened (key word: vague), and if he needs more then he can do his own research. That's the compromise that will make this wiki useful and keep PEG happy by not giving away their IP. ::::Example: The Earp entry could be made much more useful by describing how Earp handled trouble. No specific incidents are needed, since there are none in our relevant source material (Deadlands), but his methods are well described across several different volumes (even in the Hell On Earth books). Such descriptions would make the entry useful for deciding how to use the character in a manner that is consistent with the setting - that's a heck of a lot more useful and relevant than how much he paid Lynch to solve the Butcher case. ValhallaGH 20:47, November 15, 2011 (UTC) ::::I'm feeling a lot of heat from your comments, especially your second point. I'd like to make it clear that I am in no way intending to "get this wiki killed" nor infringe on anything that Pinnacle has done. I'm guessing that Cutter's comment that you are referring to is this one, which I did not see until several hours after I posted my last entry here. That said, based on Cutter's comment, it certainly seems that my vision for the wiki was quite different from others and, more importantly Pinnacle's vision for it. If that's the case, then I'll respect their vision and admit that mine was wrong. ::::It was never my intention for this wiki to be a substitute for actually buying the books. Just like other wikis (and Wikipedia itself), it was intended to give a detailed description of its contents, but not be a replacement. If this contained spoilers (or Marshal-only information), then so be it. My idea of what this looked like turned out to be quite different than the idea of what Pinnacle had in mind. I'd like to make it clear that no ill intention was meant, but was rather was a result of a misunderstanding on my part. I am human and I made a mistake. I'm very sorry for the issues that it caused and I hope that we will still be able to work together on the wiki. ::::I suppose that I should take a back seat with editing for a while until I get a feel for what the Deadlands wiki ought to look like. I'd like to see others step up to the plate and provide quality examples of what an article should look like that I can learn from. It would be helpful if we could collectively write pages outlining what level of detail is acceptable on this wiki so that others will not make the same assumptions that I did. ::::Now let's put this misunderstanding behind us and create a Deadlands wiki that Pinnacle and the rest of us can be proud of! -Thunderforge 02:08, November 16, 2011 (UTC)